Innovation News

Washington, DC — Vice President Joe Biden is outlining how he intends to pursue his “cancer moonshot” agenda after the end of the Obama administration, the Associated Press reports.

Biden says in a San Francisco speech that he will be starting an organization that may be called the Biden Cancer Initiative to make progress in changing the way the nation conducts cancer research and development and providing care to those with the disease.

Biden says the initiative will focus on improving data standards to help researchers, work with community care organizations to improve access to care and push pharmaceutical companies, insurance providers and biotech companies to ensure patients can afford treatments.

Biden has pushed for progress toward a cure since his son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, died from brain cancer in 2015.

Biden said on January 16 it’s his “prayer” that the Trump administration will be committed and enthusiastic about the goal of ending cancer.

​“... I know those in the private sector, philanthropy, at academic institutions and non-profit organizations are going to continue to work no matter what the next administration does,” he said at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

“There’s too much momentum here and this will include me as a private citizen,” he promised.

Biden said he may not have the expertise, but he has the power to convene stakeholders and has been viewed as a “fair dealer.”

“I may even have the ability to occasionally shame so people move in directions that up to now there has been unwillingness to move, because of the culture that’s developed,” he said.